Green for Irene

I love New Englanders. Saturday we did a few common sense things to make sure our yard stuff didn't wander away in the wind from Tropical Storm Irene, and then I went off to get a massage and mani pedi.


Seriously, this ended up being one of my favorite methods of storm preparation. And look my nails are green to match my latest project.

My friend Ms. Rubbyducky and I made duct tape dress forms mostly using these instructions. Then we used iv stands for dress stands, as they are inexpensive, adjustable in height (though next time I would use loctite on the threads of the adjustment mechanism) and provide an easy rolling base.

So without further a do, blog, I would like you to meet Pansy. Pansy, this is the blog. Hopefully you will be seeing more of each other in the future.

Her name is Pansy after Pansy Parkinson, as she is green on the outside but silver duct underneath. Many thanks to Cintyber who helped with the naming. Now I just need to plan some more sewing projects!

cotton socks for Salvbard

I have knit 2 pairs of socks from Cascade Fixation before, the sienna socks and red socks for my housemate. Having finally gained a little bit of confidence about working with this yarn, I was more receptive when Salvbard started hinting that he would really like a pair of cotton socks.

So I let him dig around in the stash, and he surprised me a bit by picking these colors. It is so funny to thing that this is the same man who I was so nervous about whether he would wear the crazy man socks when they turned out to be a little more colorful than originally thought.

Pattern: Lovelyarns Toe-Up Socks by Elinor Gray

Yarn: Cascade Yarns Fixation

Yarn Supplier: Mind's Eye Yarns

Needles: US 5 / 3.75 mm

Modifications: Not a whole lot, as I really like this pattern! Given that this yarn is both stretchy and slightly larger in gauge than fingering, I knit these in the largest size (a woman's large) which worked well for a man. Then I added a bunch of calf shaping, since Salvbard does have some *ahem* shapely calves.

These were my major project while we were in Europe (as seen previously), once the airlines finally got us our luggage. And the combination of the gauge, length and mindlessness of the stockinette was really welcome as excellent travel knitting.

Forest socks

We have been safely home from Europe for a few weeks, but I have been taking the time to recenter a bit. I have some things I made on the trip or saw while we were there, but first I wanted to make sure I talked about the project I finished right before we left.

The thing that made me realize that I had never talked about the FG socks is that I had started a second pair for him. I finished them just a few days before we got on the plane to Europe, although I was running around so crazy packing at that point that I didn't get pictures taken then. I have now though as I had a very obliging and tolerant model to help.

Pattern: Foxglove Master Pattern by Cat Bordhi

Pattern Source: New Pathways for Socks

Yarn: ONline Supersocke 6-ply in color 21463

Needles: US 4 / 3.5 mm

Since the last pair I made for him were cuff down, I wanted to see how well toe-up would be. For some people it seems like cuff-down ones just plain fit better, but given how big FG's feet are I really wanted to be able to maximize my yardage if possible.

As with last time, I am simply bemused by just how big this man't feet are. I have to say that making them in 6-ply made them a lot faster though. The legs seem to slouch a little more than I would like, but otherwise a 64 stitch sock seemed just about perfect in sports weight (as opposed to an 80 stitch sock in fingering).

I had to laugh that these socks make his wife think of leprechauns. This yarn was souvenir yarn from a trip to Quebec with Salvbard a few years back. (edit: Ha! Apparently I blogged about the shop we picked it up at when we visited in August 2007!) The colors remind me of deep forests, all different shades of green with touches of brown and light spots.